Chapter 11 #2
Abi reaches for the door handle and is about to do as she’s told but stops, because she needs something from Rosie too, and Rosie hasn’t asked, hasn’t bothered to think about Abi’s needs in all this. ‘Rosie, there’s something I have to ask of you.’
They look at each other and, embarrassingly, Abi feels her own eyes burn. They always do when she thinks about her girls, the years of lying.
‘If you’re going to tell everyone about Seb and about what I used to do, then please’– she forces the words out– ‘please give me the chance to tell my girls before the whole town knows. Please.’
Abi hoped that saying goodbye to Emma, her old persona, meant she’d never have to tell the girls.
That with Waverly, their new schools and friends, her girls would lose any interest in their old lives in London.
The past wouldn’t exist any more, even to Abi, and they could all live like young children, focused only on the day in front of them.
But it isn’t up to Abi any more. It’s up to Rosie and her friends. Rosie looks away as tears rise in her eyes and Abi knows she can’t talk, all she can do is nod, which will have to be enough for now.
‘Thank you. Thank you, Rosie.’ And as Abi steps out of the car into the syrupy light she hears Rosie cry out, angry, right before the car door closes with a thud, sealing Rosie and her misery away so her sorrow won’t muck up the clean Waverly air.
Abi makes roast chicken in milk with lots of bay and nutmeg, but Diego is, as always, late and the girls are hungry, so the three of them eat without him.
Half the chicken is gone, and the girls are already talking about what flavour ice cream they’re going to have with their fruit salad when Diego enters the tiny kitchen, arms outstretched, holding a bottle of what Abi immediately recognizes as an excellent Sancerre.
The girls talk over each other, Margot trying to tell Diego about her new friend Luca while Lily asks him if he’d like to see her life drawing sketches and Abi tries to shoo them away, so Diego can at least take off his jacket.
He’s here, like a human blanket; Abi wants to wrap herself in him, safe from the world.
She hadn’t realized until now how much she needs her friend, how different it is when they’re at work.
In a restaurant kitchen Diego is focused, concise, unsmiling– a typical chef.
But outside of work he laughs loudly and easily; everyone wants to be close to him.
Diego and Abi had met in a members’ bar in central London over ten years ago.
The much older men they were both with– a client of Abi’s and one of Diego’s boyfriends– knew each other from working together in a bank years ago.
While the old men reminisced, Abi and Diego found themselves next to each other on a sofa and spent the evening slagging off the bar menu, drinking outrageously priced cocktails and trying to impress each other with their knowledge of food.
That first night they argued about where to get the best oysters in London, told each other what their Death Row meal would be (mole poblano ‘with a twist’ for Diego, and a seafood lasagne from Milan for Abi), and the evening ended with Diego begging to cook for Abi.
A week later, Diego arrived in Abi’s Zone 5 flat and, over his osso buco with fried polenta cake, they’d started planning their restaurant.
He knew about her work, of course, but gay men, Abi found, understood the nuances of sex and the complex power plays. Apart from occasionally checking she was safe, Diego didn’t ask too many questions.
Now, Diego glances around the little kitchen, nods and smiles approvingly at the Picasso poster he bought for Abi’s thirtieth a couple of years ago. Margot pulls him into a chair so she can clamber on to his lap and give him one of the mermaid tattoos he sent for her when they moved.
‘Do you like yellow or brown hair best, Uncle D?’ she asks seriously, turning his forearm over in her lap.
‘On men or mermaids?’ Diego twinkles in reply, his accent making his words rise and fall like music.
He tickles Margot, who squeals, ‘Mermaids, silly!’
‘Oh, yellow. Definitely yellow.’
‘They seem well.’ Diego is smiling as he walks back into the kitchen in his slow, sloping, graceful way, helping himself to more wine.
He’s been upstairs reading Margot’s bedtime stories and then with Lily looking at her new sketches while Abi, trying to be patient, tidied the kitchen.
Diego picks at the chicken carcass Abi left on the side, which she knew he’d go looking for. ‘Lil mentioned a boy– Blake someone?’
Abi nods but she doesn’t smile and her voice is strained as she says, ‘It’s her first proper crush.’
‘Uh-oh.’ Diego can tell she’s not happy about it. He wiggles his dark eyebrows at her. ‘Is he an asshole?’
Sometimes Diego sounds just like the kid he used to be, the kid who taught himself English from watching American films in the eighties in Mexico City.
Abi shakes her head because she doesn’t want to talk about Blake or even the girls.
She steps towards Diego who drops a wing on the counter and opens his arms before wrapping her up, tightly.
She lets her head rest on his chest, feels her body exhale, relieved not to be responsible for holding herself up.
Diego kisses the top of her head, then rests his chin in the spot he just kissed and asks, ‘What’s wrong? ’
And for the first time in years, Abi cries. Her fat tears soak Diego’s shirt, and he holds her and rocks her and keeps kissing her cheek, keeps muttering, ‘Baby, poor baby,’ until her tears transform into big, billowy breaths. He pours her a glass of water and helps her to the table.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mutters, wiping under her eyes. ‘I know we’re supposed to talk about work.’
Diego ignores her and keeping his fudge-brown eyes on her says, ‘Tell me everything.’
She tells him about meeting an ex-client in her new friend’s kitchen, the shock of realizing he was not only Rosie’s husband but also Lily’s head teacher.
She tells him about the agreement she had with Seb and then about the row outside PLATE.
She tells him about her strained conversation with Rosie.
Diego sighs, winces and says, ‘ Dios mío. ’ Then he asks quietly, ‘You spoken to him since?’
She shakes her head. ‘Haven’t had the chance and, besides, I don’t really know what I can say, other than beg him to keep me out of it again, which isn’t just down to him any more. What if everyone finds out, D?’
Diego looks steadily at Abi. ‘You do what you’ve always done. You tell everyone to fuck off and live your life.’
Abi smiles briefly because suddenly Diego sounds decisive and clear, like he’s at work in a kitchen.
‘Yes, but it’s not London down here, D, it’s different.
I tell someone to mind their own business and then I’ve got to see them twice a day at school for the next however many years.
I don’t want my life, my kids’ lives to be painful and lonely just so everyone else can learn something about tolerance. ’
‘Hmmm,’ Diego agrees before adding, ‘And they’d probably be bullied.’
Diego, a gay boy growing up poor in machismo culture, knows about bullying.
Abi clasps her forehead and groaning says, ‘I think I have to go back to London, D. I don’t think I can do this…’
‘Hey, hey.’ Diego shakes his head and puts his hands on her shoulders. ‘Come on, now. I’ve never heard you talk like this– you’ve never been ashamed of who you are.’
‘Not until now. Not until moving here.’
Abi thinks about Lotte, how delighted and appalled she looked when she told her that Margot was a donor child. She’d likely combust if she found out about Abi’s past.
‘No, Abi.’ Diego holds up his hand in refusal.
‘You’ve worked too hard, too long to give up so easily.
This is your time, your chance; you deserve your chance.
You can’t let other people’s small-mindedness, their prejudices, stop you from doing what you have wanted for so long.
It might be hard, sure, but you’ve done much, much harder things in your life.
’ He pauses before he adds with a little smile, ‘Good speech, hey?’
She nods, wishes she shared his conviction.
‘But I do think if anyone else finds out then maybe tell Lily.’
Adrenaline shoots through her as she imagines the conversation. Lily pulling her hands away from Abi with a look of confusion, revulsion. What if Lily looks at her the way Rosie looked at her today? The way her own mum looked at her. That would kill her.
‘What about the restaurant?’
‘What about the restaurant?’
‘Well, if people find out about me, they might, I don’t know…’
‘Want to book a table because not only is the food magnificent but the people working there are also interesting, real people?’
Abi tries to smile at her friend’s efforts, but Diego has only just arrived in Waverly. He doesn’t understand. Abi is pretty sure Anna, Lotte and the rest would rather see her lynched for her past than help her succeed in her new life. Women, especially mothers, are never let off the hook easily.
‘Come here,’ Diego says, and they stand to hug again. He kisses the side of her head and his deep voice tickles around her ear as he says, ‘I mean it, though. You can’t give up so easily. Besides, think of all those dicks you’ve had to suck to get here.’
She whacks him in the side then and he starts picking at the chicken again while she goes upstairs to kiss Lily goodnight.